Orbit of a Sun
by Anney
Summary: Shane loves Lori the most.  Always has, always will.


_Title:_ Orbit of a Son  
><em>AN:_ No beta so if you see any mistakes feel free to point them out with my thanks. I am a little comma happy, I'll admit but the last English class I took was more than ten years ago. :l The tenses kinda go back and forth but that's on purpose. Hopefully it's not bad?  
>This was written over some months when I could get my son to leave me alone long enough to actually type it up. Two year olds, man, they're so needy. ;D <p>

_Orbit of a Sun_

Shane can remember the first time Rick saw Lori. The pause in the conversation, the way his eyes followed her down the hallway. So Shane can also remember the first time he saw Lori as well. Which means he can remember when he realized that he really wasn't that good a friend.

That Rick was a better person than him, because in that moment; as he watched Rick fall hard and fast he thought to himself that there was nothing he wouldn't do to have her. That he would fuck Rick over, drop years and years of friendship for that girl.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for Shane, she never even saw him. He watched Rick marry the love of his life,  
>watched Rick have a baby boy, watched Rick and Lori in their white picket fence house, watched Rick have everything he ever wanted and he <em>hurt<em> with it. He ached with how much he wanted everything his best friend had. So he fucked any and every willing piece of meat that would open its legs up and each time he thrust up into wet, hot, tight, heat all he could think about was Rick and Lori. All he could think about was how bad he wanted.

And then Rick was shot.

And then the world went to complete and utter shit while Shane watched his best friend breathe because a machine did the work for him, while the woman he loved for what had seemed like his entire life mourned her husband, while the son he never had tried to be a man because that's what men do and he kept them alive while people tried to eat them. He kept them alive all the way to Atlanta and even though every person he knew was dead but still living he was so happy because he finally had everything he wanted. The woman, Lori, and a son, Carl, that he never would have had otherwise. The price of that being the end of the world? Shane didn't really give a fuck.

Then Rick came back.

Shane watched everything he had kept alive, everything he loved, move away from him like a flood had hit his life and washed it all away.

Shane watched everything he fought for crumble into dust under the hands of his best friend, and he thought, at that moment, that he should have put a pillow over Rick's head. That he should have left that door propped open, unplugged all the machines before he left that hospital. He thought to himself, as Lori and Rick walked away hand in hand, that he should have killed that motherfucker. He should have killed him twice so even dead he couldn't try to get Lori back.

And he knew, in that moment, that Lori would never look at him with anything besides shame in her eyes. He knew that he had lost.

Shane and Rick had been friends since they were boys. Young boys, tiny little boys that thought girls were icky and that would wrestle with each other across the bedroom floor in any house.

Two boys that grew up into men who knew each and every thing about the other. Shane knew all his weaknesses were Rick's strengths and all his strengths were Rick's weaknesses; it's why they made such a great team as cops. It's why no one ever thought to break them up.

Shane joined the police academy right behind Rick. He stood in line with him, ran miles and miles with him. Climbed up and down, jumped through hoops, was yelled at by old men who were once in their shoes and he _hated_ Rick. He hated him with the same amount of passion he loved Lori. The two most important people in his life, the only two people he actually felt anything about.  
>Rick and Lori got married in a small church on the edge of town the summer after they graduated the police academy. Shane standing up in front of almost the whole town watching his best friend marry the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen and all he did was smile.<p>

He smiled while he watched them kiss, while they had their first dance, through the speech he gave about how much they loved and deserved each other. He smiled so hard his cheeks hurt, his teeth gritted together so he wouldn't say all the things he actually wanted to. His movements forced cheer throughout the whole thing.

Rick and Lori went on a two week honey moon and Shane went on a two week bender. He woke up sticky, a sweat slick thigh worked between the legs of a girl with long dark hair and dark eyes.

Her face slack and open with bruises down her throat, her arms, her legs in the shape of his hands. His fingermarks left up and down for all the world to see.

He buried her in his back yard right inside the edge of the woods.

Shane set his orbit on the outskirts of Rick and Lori. He circled them like they were his sun. His eyes constantly tracking their placement in the camps they set up, the convoy they drove in.

Warming himself with their smiles and laughter and their happiness. Rick's return made him the hero. All the storm clouds of their marriage that Shane used to bask in like sunshine were no more. Lori's guilt over her actions with Shane made it so Rick could do no wrong. All the talk she used to indulge with girlfriends about no longer loving the man she had married fallen to the wayside. All the fights she would pick. All the things she thought and said and yelled and threw at him she let fall down around her feet.

Rick thought it was because she had left him for dead. That to her he was back from the grave and that she felt guilt for thinking he had died, guilt for leaving him behind alone and defenseless.

All the guilt Lori carried and only she and Shane knew the truth of it.

On the way to Atlanta Shane watched Lori watching Carl watching the town he grew up in fade away in the back window. Carl watching everything he knew and loved left to rot. Left the kids he went to school with, kids he played with, kids he'd known forever piled up one on top of the other dead twice over. Shane watches Carl twist and turn in his sleep at night; his face screwed up tight and scared. Carl's fingers twisting the blanket Lori wraps around him tight like that would keep these dead things out. A tightly wrapped blanket keeping Carl safe from all the horrors the world had decided to unleash.

Shane waits one hour, two, and then Lori creeps up to him on silent feet; crawls into his blanket that he keeps wrapped loose and low. She sweeps up over him like sunlight breaking through clouds and she makes high gasping noises that he dreams about when she's gone.

Lori mourns Rick. She holds him deep inside her heart and refuses to cry in front of Carl, in front of Shane. She puts him away in a safe place that Shane can never get into. Shane wants to choke Rick out of her. He wants to put his marks up and down her body so everyone they cross paths with can see that she is his.

More than anything Shane wants to usurp Rick from every part of Lori he is in.

Shane never thought he would have children. A little boy to carry his name into eternity, a little girl to carry his genes. A small piece of him passed down little by little into the future. He never really thought to care about keeping a part of himself flung out into the world.

And then.

Then Glenn goes into town and Lori is quiet and her eyes are faraway places that Rick can't even touch. Her hands are caught between the air and her stomach, like they don't know where to settle.

Shane finally hears the word 'baby', sees the truth in her eyes and he knows, _he knows_, that a piece of him is in her belly and it will come out tying him to her forever and always. That no matter how much she denies him, how much she talks about Rick being the father, Shane knows that some of him is curled up in her belly growing each and every day into something she can't deny.

She won't be able to deny him.

Shane loves Lori, he loves Carl. He even loves that little bundle of cells that will at some point,  
>soon, be a baby that he will hold in his hand, that will grow and be amazing and there's nothing anyone can do to stop that.<p>

Shane will make damn sure of that.

(end)


End file.
